Wikihack talk:Style guide
Formality So when can we start calling this the official style guide? --ZeroOne 18:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC) : I think that the style guide still needs more work. The style guide makes some assumptions that I fail to understand, and even makes recommendations that I might want to disagree with. : The good thing about this style guide is that when someone wants to know the best way to cite source code in footnotes, or to make pretty tables, or which templates to use, then we can refer them here. : The things that might or might not need changing: (1) the recommendation against Introduction at the start, because maybe we want the TOC at the top of some pages. (2) the Wikipedia-Memory-Alpha-et-cetera " " feature, which seems unnecessary to me. (3) the general principles which defer to Wikipedia, because this wiki is not part of Wikipedia. (4) possibly something else. --Kernigh 20:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC) ::I used on Fire, which seems appropriate. Wikipedia isn't perfect, but I do think it is, in general, sane enough to be better than nothing. Please do feel free to modify this guide. I hesitated to call this a formal/official style guide, since this wiki is still young and doesn't need an excess of rules just yet. --Jayt 21:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC) : Actually looks good for pages that need to be like redirects, but to more than one page. Like fire is now. Later maybe someone will write a longer document about fire, and it might not be a " ". Interestingly, there is also a '' '' page, but I do not seem to understand it yet. --Kernigh 03:28, 29 June 2006 (UTC) :: I added Template:otheruses a few days ago... it seems to be pretty useful. GreyKnight 05:11, 13 August 2006 (UTC) History vs Mythology "The History section should be for explaining what the thing did in previous versions of NetHack. Actual history should go in Mythology." What about cases where the thing is drawn from real life, not mythology? :-( GreyKnight 05:16, 13 August 2006 (UTC) :In that case, Origin may be better. I've added this to the style guide. --Jayt 19:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC) Templates Should the "name" section of a template include the item type? For example, potion of object detection lists "potion of object detection" as the item name, and scroll of genocide lists "genocide" as the item name. I'd prefer the latter because the item names can get pretty long and make the template table wide. --Eidolos 23:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC) :I'd prefer the latter too. Perhaps replacing "Name" with "Potion"/"Scroll"/"Wand"/etc. would help. --Jayt 17:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC) Should "Cost" be renamed to "Base cost" or "Base price"? The internal field name (cost) can obviously stay, but should the output remain an unqualified "Cost"? --Eidolos 23:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC) :I see what you're saying. We don't want to get into the details of buying vs selling prices. Calling it "Base cost" should be enough of a prompt to make the reader think "Hmm, is cost not constant? Perhaps I should look for an article on cost". So yes, I think it should be renamed "Base cost".--Jayt 17:43, 14 August 2006 (UTC) ::Or we could keep it as "cost" but make it a link, Cost. --ZeroOne 18:02, 14 August 2006 (UTC) :::That too. I don't have a strong preference either way. Perhaps the number ("300zm"), which currently links to Zm, should link to Cost. I think the table would look funny with only one heading being a link. --Jayt 20:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC) :::Yeah, that's an option too. Or we could make the rest of the headings links, too. --ZeroOne 20:31, 14 August 2006 (UTC) Aleaxes vs Aleaxes vs redirect I think the header says it all, really. Aleaxes is the quickest to type, and is nicer to read in the source. On the other hand, Aleaxes is nicer to read on the page. On the gripping hand, we could just create redirects every time we come across a situation like this. My personal preference is the second one (Aleaxes), but what does everybody else think? GreyKnight 03:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC) : Uh, Aleaxes looks just like Aleaxes to the end user (without looking at the source, which is which? Aleaxes / Aleaxes). I'm all in favor of Aleaxes over the other two. --Eidolos 04:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC) :: Hmm, I see mediawiki automatically "gobbles up" the rest of the word in such a case... I hadn't known it did that, so I guess this invalidates that part of the question. GreyKnight 04:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC) : If we must have redirections, I'd only have them for monsters that pluralize with some modification to the base word (such as elf -> elves, or violet fungus -> violet fungi) so we don't have to use the pipe link form at all (just say elves and it'll redirect you to elf, BUT not for, say, quantum mechanics). But redirecting only a subset of the plural monster names could lead to problems and would be inconsistent. --Eidolos 04:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC) : May I be so bold to ask why singular names are preferred? It might be usefull to have a plural name when talking about the entire species and singular name when being specific. E.g Liches can be about all 4 liches and Lich about only the lowest L. Elf can be about the race, Elves about the enemy class. Not that it's really important, just got confused by this. --BlackShift 05:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC) ::It's mostly a matter of convention, but one good reason for having singular article names is that if the article is at orc, you can easily link to orc or orcs , but if the article is at orcs, then you have to use orc, or a redirect. Again, there's nothing wrong with redirects (other than creating more potential double redirects), but if we are going to choose between singular or plural (and we should, for consistency), then I think singular is best. ::Of course there are some naturally plural articles: Liches and Elves might be good. If so, Lich should redirect to Liches as the whole point of Liches would be to collect all relevant information in one place. For the Elf race, we should have Elf (race). --Jayt 11:41, 29 August 2006 (UTC) SLASH'EM However, this is a NetHack wiki, so consider twice whether SLASH'EM-only articles are worth creating. I think they are: (a) SLASH'EM is not just another roguelike or hacklike - it's a close fork, meaning code occasionally comes back to vanilla NetHack (the wizard patch being the major example) and this symbiotic relationship is acknowledged in the NetHack souce, (b) SLASH'EM is considered on-topic in RGRN, so why not here?, © people are going to add SLASH'EM articles anyway (it's already happened), so they may as well do it in a way that minimises the interference with vanilla articles. --Jayt 10:58, 1 September 2006 (UTC) :OK, as long as the emphasis is still on creating articles about vanilla NetHack. :) --ZeroOne 16:17, 1 September 2006 (UTC) ::Yes, of course :-) This wiki's primary objective should be to document NetHack, and NetHack should always take priority when there is potential for confusion. --Jayt 16:04, 2 September 2006 (UTC) American English or British English? Both dialects of English are being used on this wiki. There needs to be one consistent dialect for all articles, but which? I'd go with American English because that's what the DevTeam uses, and it only makes sense to be consistent with the subject of the wiki. Is there any opposition to this? -Creativename 04:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC) :I agree. --MadDawg2552 04:20, 29 January 2007 (UTC) Vandalism This page has been edited four times in the last two days by an anonymous user. The edits are all the same, removing two sections from the page and giving "Unknown" as the edit summary. The IPs are all different, some on different continents, and none has any other edit history; but the edits are all the same, and as such are probably due to a single vandal. Blocking the IPs may be justified, as they are possible open proxies, but is unlikely to persuade the vandal to stop. For this reason, I have semi-protected this page.--Ray Chason 21:41, 4 June 2007 (UTC) Suggested new section - Internals For source-divers, it can be useful to know which code macro/function is related to which function. This is not always clear – e.g. M2_STALK is the macro that determines whether monsters follow. On the other hand, putting this in the main body of the article could be extremely distracting for the many wiki readers who do not source dive. I have started adding an "Internals" section to provide such information, where I believe it may be useful. This helps source-divers reconcile the code to the spoilers without unduly distracting non-source-divers. This would be in addition to annotating the source itself. I propose this is added to the style guide. --Rogerb-on-NAO 20:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC) : agreed. -Tjr 22:31, February 19, 2010 (UTC)